Isolation week nine - lockdown relaxed

I survived my two weeks locked away! Pretty difficult to stay mentally healthy and thanks to those who listened to me crying on the end of the phone a couple of times. My flatmates were great at bringing cups of tea, getting out the way when I needed to cook, providing encouraging chats through doors and over video, and for getting the timing just right for us both to press play when watching videos together! It was certainly a relief to get to see everyone again and to be able to go outside for walks. I managed to badger the hospital into getting my rheumatologist to actually talk to me on the phone and he has organised for an ultrasound to check for inflammation and an MRI to check for soft tissue damage in my wrists. This will hopefully provide some answers as to why I keep getting excruciating pain when I do even the slightest bit of exercise. Hopefully not damage from acro....

The UK has relaxed our lockdown this week, probably prematurely, and the memes from the new "stay alert" message are well worth a look at. There has been plenty of confusion as to what we can and can't do, especially around messages like "go to work if you can't work from home, but don't take public transport". Definitely seems to be poorly thought out and it will be interesting to see how the situation changes. The government has also suggested a June 1st return for some primary children and this is causing a lot of concern. The unions are pushing hard for the government to release the scientific data that they keep telling us says it is safe to do so, but so far the evidence has not been presented. I attended a webinar on Monday for my union, one of the bigger unions, and 16,000 teachers were tuned in to listen. The concern is that the government isn't issuing safe guidelines for schools to follow around social distancing and cleaning regimes. The UK also still doesn't have a working track and trace system. The maximum class size has been set to 15 and social distancing has been lowered to 1 metre between desks. Some schools are apparently saying this means teachers can have half a class in the morning, and the other half in the afternoon, meaning they actually come into contact with 30 students! Clearly not okay and it will be interesting to see if a compromise can be met between unions and the government in the next week or so. It has been disappointing to see many public comments that "teachers are holding the economy to ransom", that we are "lazy", and that it is our "turn to be heroes" - I guess teacher-bashing is the same the world over! Thankfully my school isn't pushing for a return any time soon and all our focus has been on refining how we deliver lessons online from home.

We are definitely enjoying the fact we can now sit in the parks and go for a drive to exercise somewhere else. The weather has been steadily improving and Esther and I went for a walk through part of the Surrey hills. Great to see somewhere different! The new rules mean our new flatmate Jo can move in next week as well which will be great. We spent Saturday repainting her room since our landlord can't come in to do it (well, I helped tape, and do some of the cutting in). She is a primary teacher so if she goes back to school I am probably going to have social distance again from the flatmates, though not at quite the extreme as I have just done. Tricky, but necessary to stay safe!